Bigger Insights Privacy & Security

Email was never designed to be private or secure, so not surprisingly, it is neither private, nor secure. In the previous episode, we explained the reasons why as well as the risks inherent to email. However, email is so prevalent that it is unfortunately a necessary evil. In this episode, we provide seven recommendations for how to use email somewhat securely...

Email is the primary means of sending messages and documents for many people. Unfortunately, email was never designed to be private or secure. Over time, we’ve developed several tools and techniques to help make it more secure. But at the end of the day, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel, email is inherently insecure. Just ask the US military. Millions of military emails are going to Mali (.ml TLD) rather than the military (.mil domain) due to mundane typos...

You may have heard others in the privacy and security community call virtual private networks (VPNs) “useless”, “scams”, or “honeypots”, but is this actually the case? There are certainly a lot of sketchy VPNs and creators who shill them, but does that invalidate the thesis for using a VPN? We discuss this issue as well as offer a few tips for using VPNs and Tor to protect your privacy. Visit us at biggerinsights.com to request a consultation or read our blog...

Trouble has been brewing between Daniel Micay, GrapheneOS, and the privacy and security community for several months. This has culminated in Daniel, the founder of GrapheneOS, stepping down as lead developer of the project in late May, 2023. In this episode, we go over this issue in some detail and defend Daniel Micay and GrapheneOS from some of the criticisms and responses they’ve received, which we believe are unjustified...

The constant stream of news regarding mobile phone spyware (e.g. Pegasus) and hacks may have you wondering – should you use a dumb phone for privacy and security? We often see criminals in movies and TV using dumb phones as burners, but does this really make you more private and secure relative to using a smart phone? We answer these questions in this episode, as well as impart some cold, hard truths about the privacy and security implications of voice (PSTN) and SMS...

You probably have more accounts than you realize - perhaps dozens that you’ve opened over the years and forgotten about. Every account you have is a potential liability in terms of your privacy and security. In this episode, we detail: 1. Techniques for finding accounts you’ve forgotten about; 2. Why and how you should sanitize accounts before closing them; and 3. Why and how you should close old/unneeded accounts...

Have you ever opened an account and regretted it? Has your private data been used, abused, and breached? We have years of experience fighting with hundreds, if not thousands of different apps and services to harden, sanitize, delete sensitive information, and recover from data breaches. In this episode, we share our insights from these experiences so you can hopefully avoid the pitfalls we and our clients have encountered over the years. More specifically, here in Part 2 of 2, we discuss: 1...

Have you ever opened an account and regretted it? Has your private data been used, abused, and breached? We have years of experience fighting with hundreds, if not thousands of different apps and services to harden, sanitize, delete sensitive information, and recover from data breaches. In this episode, we share our insights from these experiences so you can hopefully avoid the pitfalls we and our clients have encountered over the years. More specifically, here in Part 1 of 2, we discuss: 1...

In this episode, we explore just exactly what is uncool in the privacy scene. Does this have you feeling uncool? If so, visit us at biggerinsights.com to request a consultation or read our blog. If you don’t get the reference, you may not appreciate this as much as you otherwise would. Please consider making a non-deductible contribution to help us break through Big Tech suppression and keep this podcast going. OpenAlias: contribute.biggerinsights.com...

LastPass has been hacked… again. This time, user vaults were stolen by hackers. The more updates we receive about this dumpster fire, the worse it gets. In this episode, we explain what happened and how you should protect yourself. We also outline lessons everyone (users, business owners, developers) should take away from this event and apply them to create a more private and secure future. Visit us at biggerinsights.com to request a consultation or read our blog...